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Happiness and its pursuit have been a constant source of fascination and attraction for thousands of years. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods, now we consider it a right. Why did this change and what does it tell us about our society? In The Pursuit of Happiness, cultural historian Darrin McMahon offers a brilliant summation of the history of happiness, and its evolution from divine gift to natural human entitlement. Central to the development of Christianity, ideas of happiness assumed their modern form during the Enlightenment, and McMahon follows this development through to the present day, showing how our modern quest for the 'holy grail' of happiness continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain. Perfect happiness may exist only in our minds, but McMahon helps us discover that as for Cervantes' knight of sad countenance, Quixote, to travel is better than to arrive.… (más)
About happiness you can produce a library and stil not get beyond generalities; that's the problem with a container concept, such as ' love ' and ' peace '. This is also evident from this book. This is already quite an extensive book, and yet it covers only what great thinkers in Western history have written about happiness. This is intellectual history 'pur sang', at most a study of the "intellectual concept of happiness". For those that love this kind of approach, this certainly is a successful book, with fine text analysis and a broad overview of the Western philosophical tradition. But a true history of mankind's search for happiness, this is not. ( )
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped. --Psalm 17: 5
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. --Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
For Courtney, partner in pursuit, who has endured all the moods that writing a book on happiness entails, and invented some of her own.
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
(Preface): "One may contemplate history from the point of view of happiness" observfed the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "but history is nto the soil in which happiness grows."
(Introduction): The search for happiness is as old as history itself, one might venture, and in a certain sense that claim would be true.
Happiness is what happens to us, and over that we have no control.
Citas
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
We may well discover that the knights who dare to do so are less like the brave crusaders of lore than like Cervante's knight of the sad countenance, Quixote, who learns at the end of his journeys that the road is better than the arrival.
Happiness and its pursuit have been a constant source of fascination and attraction for thousands of years. In ancient Greek tragedy, happiness was considered a gift of the gods, now we consider it a right. Why did this change and what does it tell us about our society? In The Pursuit of Happiness, cultural historian Darrin McMahon offers a brilliant summation of the history of happiness, and its evolution from divine gift to natural human entitlement. Central to the development of Christianity, ideas of happiness assumed their modern form during the Enlightenment, and McMahon follows this development through to the present day, showing how our modern quest for the 'holy grail' of happiness continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain. Perfect happiness may exist only in our minds, but McMahon helps us discover that as for Cervantes' knight of sad countenance, Quixote, to travel is better than to arrive.
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